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to lose, then the people in other matrices are as we are, whether they happen to live in another dimension
or not."
"But they have their own standards! Our moral obligation is to not judge them by our moral stand-ards."
"Ourmoral standards? They are not ours, but come from On High. We merely follow them; and we must
see that others follow them. The standards exist in their own right, whether acknowledged or not, just as
God does."
The Meacher family enjoys such arguments and takes them up at a moment's notice, like embroidery.
Rastell had brought out a small black notebook and was looking up classification numbers.
"Then we will escape to a matrix far from this, where no God has ever been acknowledged on Earth," he
said. There must have been irony in his voice, but Candida said eagerly, "There is such a matrix? Then
indeed we can be of some positive good there!" She clapped her hands.
Rastell put her through the portal first. I went next. He came last, and I saw he materialized carrying the
portal, like a circus clown who jumps through his own hoop. But I had no time to ponder this minor
wonder of science, for Candida was already involved in a flaming row with an inhabitant of our new
matrix!
The matrix or the inhabitant? Which to start with? The inhabitant I had better not refer to him as a
Scot claimed all of Candida's attention, and so it was on him I looked first, and he shall be first
de-scribed.
He was an undersized specimen, of brutal demean-or, with coarse hair that I suspected covered all his
barrel-body under its coarse clothing. Evidently, he had grasped Candida as soon as she materialized. He
was chattering at her in a language I could not un-derstand and getting the worst of the battle, for she
was clouting him with the heavy shopping bag she had carried to church. Even as I ran to tackle her
assailant, he broke away.
Just for a moment, he bent and made a gesture of such animal obscenity that Candida shrieked in
indig-nation. Then he made off downhill fast, running flat-footedly along the paved street.
I say street-track would be a better word. For this Edinburgh our fair Auld Reekie hardly resembled
in any way except the characteristic lie of the land the city of my or Rastell's dimension. The houses
appeared to be merely senseless accumulations of stones and branches of trees. The street, as I say, was
a mere track between these shacks and was piled with refuse and human droppings. Where, in our
matrix, St. Giles had stood, was a rough building, almost like a crude parody of a church, with a sort of
spire that on closer inspection proved to be the apex of a dead fir tree.
All this I could see because here it was happily still only midafternoon, and I resolved that we should be
gone by dusk. Whatever had befallen the miserable inhabitants of Earth here, I saw no reason why we
should inflict their lot on ourselves.
"So this is what a world is like without belief in the Lord!" exclaimed Candida. "The heathens! They look
and act like godless ones! Yes, the devil rules here. Be off!"
This last was directed at a group of capering loons who had collected to see the fun. They jumped up
and down with glee, cackled, turned cartwheels, mimicked our actions.
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I turned to Rastell. "They're a pack of apes! Noth-ing but a pack of apes! What sort of trick is this?
You've shot us into a kind of prehistoric matrix, haven't you?"
"No, it is no trick. This is a matrix exactly contem-porary with ours. Only the human race has taken a
different path."
"Away from God!" said Candida. "If only I could speak their language!"
A piece of filth hit her on the shoulder. Our specta-tors perhaps angered by the dullness of our
per-formance had started to throw things. I grasped Candida around the shoulders and urged her
away. The spectators bunched fingers at both ends of their long lipless mouths and whistled in
derision-wonderful, long, whooping, spiky, swooping, whistles; wish I could do it! With Rastell following,
we hurried between two of the fetid shacks, nearly tripping over droves of little hairy black pigs as we
went.
And there Edinburgh ended, in mud and wretched fields. What I knew as Cowgate was unkempt
agricul-tural land. And it was being worked! Two groups were at work, engaged in some sort of plowing
oper-ation. Above the plow itself sat, in each case, an ape overseer on a perch, which he grasped with
his feet while wielding a crude thong whip over the backs bent before him. In one group, these backs
were many: puny little monkey backs, where a dozen simi-an captives sought to drag the plow through
the stony ground. In the other group, the back was but one: a broad black back, as some immense
creature like an overgrown gorilla tugged at the shafts that moved the furrowing blade. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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